


The Return

by Ariana (ariana_paris)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-25
Updated: 2012-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-31 00:54:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariana_paris/pseuds/Ariana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock returns. John isn't happy to see him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Return

**Author's Note:**

> Since practically every other author in the fandom has written this story - some of them so sublimely I could never hope to match them - I thought I would add my contribution too.

"You. Fucking. _Bastard_!"

Sherlock winced as his head bumped the wall in the narrow hallway with a dull thud. He tasted blood but had no time to react before John whacked him again. He lost his balance and fell onto the laminate floor, arms raised to defend himself as the ex-serviceman crouched beside him.

"You... You--"

John was choking on his words, swearing. When John moved towards him again, Sherlock took on a defensive stance despite his prone position. But instead of punching him, John grabbed Sherlock by his lapels and pulled him up into a sitting position. He seized Sherlock's chin and tilted his face toward the energy-saving lightbulb above them, searching for the chicken pox scars on his right cheek and at the corner of his mouth, before turning his head roughly the other way to touch the freckle above his left eyebrow. He released Sherlock's chin and pulled up one of his sleeves, checking the faded tracks on his left arm.

"No stigmata, I'm afraid," said Sherlock, irritated by the inspection. He shook John's hands off angrily. "And that's quite enough of that! Yes, it's me."

John sat down, leaning against the opposite wall, less than a metre away from Sherlock. He looked older and thinner than Sherlock remembered, but the throbbing in Sherlock's jaw showed that he had lost nothing of his strength.

"It really is you," said John, still staring at Sherlock in disbelief. "You’re back.” He didn’t look pleased. “But _how_? I saw you fall... I saw you-- no, I didn't see you land. I only saw you fall. I didn't see..." He looked up at the ceiling, his face contorted in the pain of realisation. "Oh god, the corpse was cold. I felt for a pulse and I should have known, should have felt that the corpse was cold and you would still have been warm. But I was dazed and in shock and they were pulling me away, and I saw your face, I thought I saw your face-- I saw what I expected to see... You must have had help. Not just the people in the street, the cyclist..." He fixed Sherlock with a sharp look, his eyes almost black in the diffuse light. "Who helped you? Mycroft? Lestrade?"

Sherlock shook his head and would have explained the whole thing, but John continued to talk as if he wasn't there.

"You'd have needed someone close by that day. You were whisked away so quickly. Someone at the hospital. Molly? Molly! She's the one who id'd the body, said I didn't have to. She produced the death certificate and the autopsy report they read at the inquest. So she's known all along? But she wept buckets at your funeral!"

"Of course she did," snapped Sherlock. "You read out 'Stop All The Clocks' by WH Auden. She made me watch it on YouTube afterwards and wept buckets all over again."

He didn't admit that he'd felt close to tears himself at the idea of John reading out such an evocative eulogy. The effect was only slightly dampened by the headlines the next day. That fake weirdo Sherlock Holmes's "live-in partner" reading out Auden's eulogy to his gay lover. The press had had a field day.

John shot him a murderous glare. "You knew-- You, you utter _bastard_. You let me-- us go through all that!"

Sherlock stared at him in dismay. This wasn't going at all as he had planned. Less than five minutes ago, Sherlock had been standing just inside the door, hearing John's footsteps outside and waiting with anticipation to see his friend again. But John had thrown a punch almost as soon as he recognised Sherlock, and although the erstwhile detective at first assumed that John was mistaking him for someone else, it was becoming clear that he really was angry at _Sherlock_. Which made no sense.

John shook his head, his gaze wandering away again.

"Mrs Hudson put on a brave face but she was beside herself some days. It was almost painful to see her. Lestrade was suspended. Had to practically order him to go back to that dreary wife of his because he kept bugging me, but then she left him too, so he keeps calling because he doesn't really know what to do with himself. They're taking their own sweet time investigating him, too. Every case you ever helped him on is being examined. It doesn't matter whether you were right or not; they'll throw the book at him for letting you do his job whatever happens. There's too much press interest for them to bury it and move him."

"I know, I saw it online when--"

"And there was so much we had to do! The inquest, the funeral, the burial, the endless fucking paperwork that Mycroft should have bloody dealt with. Why the hell did you make _me_ your next of kin? I had to close your bank account. Cancel your Internet account, deal with the council tax, the water bills you never used to pay, the energy company, your mobile phone contract. It felt like I individually notified every person in the bloody country. Repeating over and over that Mr Sherlock Holmes was dead and would you please stop calling or emailing or writing to him. All the time, the fucking papers kept... God. All the time, everywhere I looked there was something about you, some speculation or theory or... Mrs Hudson gave your equipment away but I had to pack up all your stuff in boxes... Your clothes, your books, your--" He swallowed hard. "You have _no_ idea what I've been through."

"Yes I do," said Sherlock leaning forward earnestly. "That's why I came back. I'd planned to stay away until my name was cleared and every one of Moriarty's associates was out of commission, but --"

"Oh, well, _thanks_ for finding a break in your busy schedule," interrupted John. "You can fuck off now. I'm fine."

Sherlock had never understood why people said that when they obviously weren't. "No, you're not! Yes, you've got a job, and there's a girl who is sufficiently interested in you to make you take a picture of her with her mate on your phone -- I'm guessing it's the dark-haired one. She looks your type and you like her enough to take her number and yet you haven't returned her calls recently. You've been keeping busy with your effort to clear my name, of course. All those interviews, side-stepping the insinuations, fighting the British media who will destroy anyone who stands against them. But you, personally, are not doing well at all. You've moved out of 221b because you couldn't stand to live there without me, but you still pay Mrs Hudson a small rent from the money I left you. Instead you choose to live here in this basement flat in Lambeth with virtually no furniture, no photographs and no books."

"Sherlock..." pleaded John.

"You've gone back to your therapist who thinks you're not coping at all and is worried about you. Maybe even thinks you might attempt suicide. The last three calls on your phone are from her -- you left your phone on the table when you went out, by the way -- none of her calls have been returned, which leads me to believe that you've decided she can't help. You attended a fair few sessions before deciding that, which combined with the painkillers in your bathroom makes me think the psychosomatic pains that aflicted you when we first met have returned. And yet, you've given up on the idea that it will ever get better by abandonning your sessions--"

"Sherlock, stop..."

"In fact you rarely return anyone's calls, even though everyone from your sister to Lestrade has been trying to contact you these past weeks. You're still visiting my grave, talking to me as if I were there. I've never heard what you said but I've seen you wipe your face afterwards. It doesn't give you any consolation. It's been months now but you're still mourning my death, still searching for answers, and--"

"Sherlock, shut up!" cried out John. He was frowning angrily again but there was something wrong with his face, the lines deep as if it were about to crumple. "God, just shut the fuck up."

"I thought you'd be pleased to see me," said Sherlock weakly, bewildered by John's reaction.

John took in a deep breath and stood up. He took a tentative step towards the living room, but then seemed to think better of it when Sherlock also stood. John leaned against the wall, his back turned; Sherlock could only see his profile against the featureless white wall.

"You'll have to give me a while," said John quietly, though his voice still sounded tense. "I've just discovered that the man I've been grieving for all this time, the man I've been defending... is a fraud. The kind of man who thinks it's okay to lie to me for _months_. To let me suffer. To let us all suffer. I thought you were dead, Sherlock. I talked to your grave because I thought you were gone." He frowned. "But all the time, you were lurking in the bushes watching me? Watching me pour my..." He sighed. "You made me watch you fall. You made me watch you _die_. _Why?_ What the hell was it all about, Sherlock?"

Sherlock breathed a small sigh of relief. Feeling on safer ground now that they were dealing with facts, he spoke confidently, expecting the matter to be cleared up.

"Moriarty had killers primed to murder you, Mrs Hudson and Lestrade if I didn't die that day. They needed to see me jump and then they needed confirmation that I was dead before they would call it off. Ever since the swimming pool, I've known I had to destroy Moriarty and his organisation. None of you would ever be safe as long as he was obsessed with me, and as long as his associates were at large. So I planned it all. I calculated how long it would take you to get to Baker Street and back, I arranged to get some of the gas from Baskerville so you would--"

"I don't want to hear how fucking clever you are, Sherlock," said John through gritted teeth. "I want to know why you did that to me."

"I-I needed everyone to think I was dead so you would be safe," said Sherlock, faltering as he began to realise that John's perspective on the whole thing was quite different from his own. "Moriarty's criminal web was still out there and I needed to bring them down. The only way to do that was to cut myself off from you all so that--"

John shrugged, a humourless smile twisting his lips. "You needed to get rid of us so you and your brilliant brain could continue your love affair in peace. I see. You might rationalise it as concern for our safety, but I've had this worked out for a while. Why you jumped. There was the press of course - not the stuff about you being the fraud, but the constant attention. The constant throng of people around you. I know you hated that. And I think you found us too much too. You didn't like having people who knew your secrets. People who stayed around long enough to see you hurt or vulnerable or _wrong_. Hangers-on. People to care for. People who cared. _Friends_."

Sherlock blinked. "It was the only way to keep you safe--"

"No!" exclaimed John, turning towards him with one finger raised. Sherlock jumped a little and prepared to hit back if his erstwhile friend struck him again. But John struggled to control himself, taking a deep breath before he continued. "No. The way to keep us safe was to tell us what the bloody hell was going on. You think forging off on your own was the solution to keep us damsels in distress _safe_? I'm a bloody soldier, Sherlock. I fought off three people just recently who didn't get the memo about your death. Mrs Hudson knocked one of them out with a frying pan. And Lestrade is a policeman! You might think everyone is inferior, but believe it or not, the British Army and the Metropolitan Police don't actually employ idiots or weaklings. We could have helped!"

Sherlock shook his head. "None of you were a match for Moriarty!"

"We didn't need to be. We could have fought him _together_ ," argued John, and Sherlock could see a spark of excitement in his eyes. "We could certainly have helped you hunt down those people you say you're looking for. When normal people need help, Sherlock, they ask their friends. You should have told us. Instead, you just took this insane decision and..."

He paused, staring at Sherlock with some new expression; disappointment? Sorrow? Sherlock wished he had learned to read people's emotions the way he read their clothes and artefacts.

"You ruined our lives," said John finally. "You should go. Maybe some other day..." He glanced at Sherlock but dropped his gaze almost immediately. "You can't expect to just walk back in like this. After what you've done."

Sherlock bristled with outrage. Moriarty and his people had threatened his friends and _he_ was the one who had done something wrong? But he looked at John's stricken face and thought about what he had said, about what Sherlock had missed while he was out of the country, hunting down Moriarty's men under cover of being deceased. Most of all, he looked at John, loyal, angry, _hurt_ John, who was still standing in the dull light of the bulb above them, waiting for Sherlock to leave. Or maybe waiting for Sherlock to speak.

He wished he had a clue what was going on. All he knew was that he didn't like this situation and he wanted it fixed.

"I'm sorry," said Sherlock, almost surprising himself with the words. He took a step closer to John. "I'm so sorry. I wanted to keep you safe, that's all." He looked down and plucked at a loose thread on his sleeve. "I was wrong. It was stupid. I-I don't want you to be cross with me anymore."

Raising his eyes, Sherlock was relieved to see an expression he recognised on John's face. He still wasn't looking at Sherlock, but his thin lips were quirked into the beginning of a smile. John's dark blue eyes flittered back and forth, to the wall, to Sherlock's fingers still holding the thread, the cogs in his ordinary mind churning almost visibly.

Then without shifting his feet, John leaned forward and rested his forehead on Sherlock's shoulder. It was an odd gesture but it made Sherlock's heart beat wildly. He hoped it meant forgiveness for a sin he still didn't entirely understand. He nuzzled John's short greying hair. It smelled of cheap shampoo.

"Hey, don't push it," muttered John, pulling back, though there was a twinkle in his eye.

They gazed at each other for a while. Sherlock couldn't exactly understand why he felt so happy, except that more than anything, he had missed John these past months. Hunting down criminals just wasn't as much fun without John to joke with, John to make him eat and sleep, John to be with afterwards when the adrenaline was spent and he was left with nothing but his obsessive mind for company. The past months had been a succession of lonely hotel rooms and bolt holes. From now on, Sherlock promised himself that John would be there with him.

He was so happy that it seemed the most natural thing in the world to lean down and kiss John's lips.

"Um, okay!" said John taking a step back. He looked agitated but not entirely displeased. "Can I get back to you on that? Also, um, you're bleeding, so..." He peered at Sherlock's split lip. "Nothing serious. But you'll get another one if you ever pull a stunt like this again!"

"I've missed you," said Sherlock.

"Good." John patted his shoulder a little awkwardly. "Look, I, um, I think I'll put the kettle on. Fancy a cuppa?"

Sherlock laughed. "God, I've missed you."


End file.
